Johnson & Johnson Consumer India’s Vice President of Marketing has revealed that the company has ambitious growth plans for the rural Indian market.
In an interview with Bloomberg Quint, Ganesh Bangalore said that the baby category is expected to grow at 10 to 12 percent annually over the next five years, and that the company was poised to take full advantage with plans to increase penetration in rural regions.
“Baby care is still an underdeveloped category, it’s worth about Rs2,000 crore now. The per capita spend on baby households is expected to double in the next five years,” he told Bloomberg Quint.
Bangalore also divulged that the company was not averse to the idea of entering the popular Ayurveda segment in the future, “There are a couple of criteria that are important to address. The first is safety. Second, it should meet a need and the third is what value we bring. If those three criteria are met, I’m sure you will see something coming in the future.”
However, for now the consumer giant is concentrating on growing the e-commerce business. To that end, the company has launched a YouTube channel named ‘Best for Baby’ to allow moms to access information on baby care 24/7. “Baby care has started to be a big category going forward for e-commerce,” said Bangalore. “Is it something that is very big for us? No. But do we think that it is going to be very big? Absolutely. Part of the work we are doing in the entire digital space is centred around understanding how the mom is behaving, consuming media information etc.”